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WELCOME

Welcome to The Politicizer and with it, welcome to a new perspective on politics. The Politicizer is a new kind of political blog – It is neither right wing, nor left wing, nor is it moderate. The Politicizer is not a news feed, a report, or even a journal – rather it is the voice of the generation that was the focus of the 2008 election – young people, the ‘Internet Generation’.

iGeneration/Generation Internet/The Millenials

- noun
1. The group of Americans who grew up during the 90's and early 2000's.
2. The generation that grew up with computers and cell phones in their homes.
3. Born after 1985

Media, Meet Our Generation

Conor J Rogers, Political Editor

WELCOME to The Politicizer and with it, welcome to a new perspective on politics. The Politicizer is a new kind of political blog – It is neither right wing, nor left wing, nor is it moderate. The Politicizer is not a news feed, a report, or even a journal – rather it is the voice of the generation that was the focus of the 2008 election – young people, the ‘Internet Generation’.

Comprised of eight bloggers, from states and universities across the nation, we have an array of political persuasions and personal opinions. We are conservative, liberal, moderate, libertarian, capitalist, democrat, republican, socialist and independent and we are quite literally all on the same page. The Politicizer seeks first to express all opinions, and second to express our generation, where we have come from, where we are, and most importantly, where we are headed.

Many pundits and commentators assume that they live in the same world as the current group of 16-20 somethings currently gathering all the media and political attention. Yet even if they have barely crossed the ’30 mark’ their world is still vastly different from ours. To point out a few differences, most of us learned to drive on two to three dollar a gallon gasoline and don’t consider it too bad, we’ve never really looked anything up in an encyclopedia except for an assignment, the internet is a part of our daily social lives rather than an addition to it, and for the most part the only thing most people our age remember about Bill Clinton is that he had an affair and his wife ran for President.

So really then, where are we coming from? If our world is so different from those who have come before us, what shaped it? To start out, as young people, we are understandably frustrated – either with the new President, the past President, or both of them. As students, we are facing the prospects of high unemployment and a weakened United States to greet us upon our graduation. We have navigated politics during a bitterly partisan era. These surely are among our top concerns yet this blog was born of another frustration – the frustration we feel when ‘young people’ are grouped into a single political category, ideology or group. We did not all vote for Obama, we are not all consumerist, we are not all selfish, we do not define ourselves by the clothes we buy, we did not all grow up playing video games, we are all not in favor of gay marriage, and we aren’t wholly conservative or liberal, and unlike generations before us, we have not found a great social movement to which to join up with, nor did we band together in protest of a war as generations before us did. We witnessed America rally together in the wake of a vicious attack that ruptured our collective childhood, an attack that once and for all silenced what we had been told growing up in a post-cold war world…mainly that “Wars don’t happen here” and “America is the safest country on earth.” In the wake of this unified America, we watched our nation get suddenly torn apart by partisan quarrels and election cycles. We are young Americans who grew up during the most prosperous time in recent history, witnessed our way of life brutally attacked, yet stood resilient with our nation and watched it recover only to see it stumble once again in the wake of our most recent economic problems.

Unfortunately, this is where we are now. We are the first age group in decades to worry that our college educations may not be enough to attain the American Dream, and we have watched three bitterly contested elections and a government that has swung like a pendulum, with no substantial results no matter who is in control. We stand poised to take over a world with a wounded economy, and a changing global paradigm. Our old alliances are being both challenged and strengthened, and new ones are being cultivated by an equally new President. We are taught in our college lecture halls that China is creeping up on the United States and that we are being released into a job market that includes competition from Mumbai and Shanghai not just Los Angeles and New York.

So now, where are we headed? I hope that readers will find, from this blog’s own writers, that our generation, this ‘internet generation’ like every American generation before us is not satisfied with this reality and will fight for a leg up, wants to see a unified America and is determined to make this world better than we found it – and again, like every American generation before us, we could not disagree more on how to get there.

Conor J Rogers is currently a student at the George Washington University, former Chairman of the New Jersey Teenage Republican Organization, The Tri-State Republican Volunteer Team, and has served as a campaign staffer for the Rudy Giuliani, John McCain Presidential Campaigns and Tom Kean for Senate Campaign. A fiscal conservative and social moderate, he is the Political Editor for The Politicizer.

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2 Responses to “Media, Meet Our Generation”

[…] but often times we don’t really want to talk to you. Recall from my original post titled ‘Meet our Generation” that the internet is an integral part of our social lives, not an addition to it. Now, just like […]